


Another Perspective

by Esoop



Series: Howling Wasteland [2]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hornet has problems, Multi, Non spoiler tags updated as the story goes, Teachers Archive, but we just skip over the conversations we already know happen, eventually, most charecters from the game appear, part of a larger work, they wont be resolved in this one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:40:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27564679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esoop/pseuds/Esoop
Summary: After several lifetimes of stasis, somethings happened within hallownest. Visitors are appearing in greater number at the cliff outside the kingdom, and the ancient pestilence has return in full force. Hornet, daughter of hallownest, has quite a few problems on her hands; Why has a man carrying a dreamer mask challenged her at the gates of the kingdom, and what are these black creatures appearing everywhere?An experiment of how hornet may act and perceive the world given her childhood and life circumstances, she had some fucked up role models yo. Setup for a future story about cosmic horror and futility, but that’s for much later ;p
Relationships: The Pale King & White Lady
Series: Howling Wasteland [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034952
Kudos: 14





	1. The beginning of the end

**Author's Note:**

> Doing my best to follow cannon here, but the story is a set-up for a very non-cannon story im planning.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stasis fails, and hornet runs into a certain someone in greenpath

Hallownest was a titanic, wretched thing. Like the corpse of a whale beached on the shore, it had been rotting and breaking down for nearly as long as she could remember. Save for but a glimpse in her furthest memories of shining metropolis' and gods among common bugs, the kingdom was now barely even a shell of its former self. The door to the wastes beyond had been walled off, and the gates of the then last city shut even before that. What few people still remained in the kingdom have either been driven mad, or turned to scavenging among the forsaken landscape in search of the grand promises the King had made so long ago. Even her home, far away and through twisting tunnels weaved deeper into the ground, had not survived the collapse wrought by the kingdoms hubris, now the hidden city of her childhood was just as rotten as the rest of the lands.

Miles away, she stood within the last temple, and glanced briefly at the sealed chamber at its center. Within was held the final hope of what was left of this kingdom, an empty being which had barely contained the calamity, freezing the kingdom in a near eternal single moment of decay. Her entire life had been lived in that moment, years seeing the denizens as rotting husks of what they once were, years of knowing she couldnt help her people as they decayed and lost their minds as the hubris from the kingdom spread to her home, and years upon years of knowing that, deep in her old bedchambers lay her mother, frozen in a eternal deep sleep, tied to the containment of the creature within the sealed egg as a guardian within a realm not her own.

After she lost her mother, her life had been tending as best she could to a kingdom rotten to the core, attempting to preserve what little of virtue that remain from the vultures who tried to pilfer it, and from the internal threats that remained from the madness that had struck down the kingdom. That was at least until recently, when something had changed. The few mad creatures left grew aggressive, and began to attack the few sane bugs who visited from the above ground settlement. The air grew heavy and damp, and a sweet scent filled the tunnels. And in a flash, it was as if she had left that single moment, bleary eyed and confused. Things began to happen rapidly, a stream of new faces approached the gate to the kingdom, far more then she could manage, and she retreated to the sub-terranian to try and figure out what had happened.

She traveled to the verdant realm outside the kingdom to think in peace, idly hunting the re-awoken guardians there who showed the same signs of the sickness as the husks of the kingdom. As she wondered through the wilds, the masonry and tasteful architecture of the kingdom gradually broke down further and further, first blending with, then giving way entirely to the natural wilds. The land was ancient, and the god of this area had lived long before the arrival of the king. Totems and temples dotted the landscape, their admirers and craftsmen gone with the god themselves. The acidfalls and gentle wildlife had always made the area one of the few places within the land that she could relax in, though the sickness had begun to emerge in the fauna as well, so that seemed unlikely to last for long. It was in that wilderness that she came upon her first clue.

While she had been tracking a particularly large beastie amongst the highlands, she came across a side path that seemed to be entirely still. Hornet stopped, scanning the path for what had caused the sudden disruption in the vibrant wildlife. After a moment of the strange silence, she entered the path, taking slow steps as she scanned the foliage, weapon at the ready. The sounds of the river transitioned to white noise, then silence, the wind dyeing as she progressed. The tunnel passed through a low archway onto a overlook of a large cavern, the strange sun of the realm filtering impossibly through the endless flora of the celling to illuminate the rune-stone planted in its center. 

Far below her, a figure was dragging itself towards the pillar slowly, leaking black ichor behind itself as it pulled itself through the grass. She had hopped down to the beings level and paced over to it, hoping to atleast learn what the small being was before it expired. She slid the last few meters as the figure slouched itself against the stone. "Hello little one" she whispered gently, grabbing the being and rotating it towards her, "My names H-" her breath caught in her throat as she saw their eyes, sluggish black liquid trickling from two large holes in a artificial mask. She dropped them and took a step back, her hands covered in a black hue deeper then any carapace. The being shifted slightly to look at her, where its eyes should have been was only a pair of black abyss'.

She took its nail from its limp arm and finished it off, leaving quickly to search for running water.

````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

By the time she had gotten to the river, poc marks had been burnt into the carapace of her hands.

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

The encounter had snapped her out of her confusion. Her vision gained a new focus, and she had set off at once towards the surface. The tunnels of the crossroads were no match for her, needle flashing and silk humming as she threw and pulled herself up and up, emerging into the straight tunnel that made up the highest of the sub-surface tunnels. She bypassed the great chain most bugs used as their path to the surface, the village above had nothing to offer to her mission. Through another of the kingdom's ever present famous arches, she emerged into the cavern that housed the Black Egg Temple. The temple was the most grand building outside of the old city, a primordial gargantuan bug hollowed out and converted into a place of worship to many, but hornet knew the truth of the place. She passed numerous metal signs erected into the bedrock on her way to its door, many bearing the sigil of the king, a few bearing seals of various major and minor nobles, and the most numerous simply being intricate proofs of their crafters skill. Unnervingly, just as all other metal posts in the kingdom, the signs remained in perfect condition, rustless and erected perfectly straight, not a single one damaged or changed from the passage of time. She paused before the open doorway, the massive face of the ancient bug looked blankly at the hewn stone across the cavern, three symbols carved into its chitin above the door, and the bottom part of its mask carved away and replaced with crystal glass. She pressed through into the quiet and heavy chamber.

Dozens of lights were dispersed throughout the chamber, their light catching on the walls and the floor, luminating the temple in an ethereal blue light only tempered by the pitch black at the center of the room. The titular egg was a large black orb set into the floor. The egg had sat here as long as any record showed or survivor remembered, even hornet wasn't sure if it had been made by the king or existed long before. The Egg was sealed with a large basalt door, uncannily complex runes carved into its surface that merged and flowed with each other beyond the skill of any of the old kingdoms craftsmen. Engraved on its surface were three sigils, each representing the mask worn by one of the three dreamers, important citizens of Hallownest who had been placed into an eternal dream in order to defend the inhabitant of the egg beyond their natural ability and life span. She tried not to look for too long at them, her mothers face starring back at her anytime she glanced at it.

As she approached, she began to feel another presence, not physically, but as if someone was calling out, like a mother calling her kids back inside. The sigils on the door throbbed gently white as she got closer, the calling an almost audible whisper increasing until she all but touched the door, then it died off. Placing her head to the door, she felt the heavy silence in her carapace, waiting nearly a minute in the dead quiet room. Though she her royal blood ran quite cold for a living being, she could tell the door was far colder, sucking the warmth out of the air along with the noise and energy of whoever entered.

It was only as she started to pull away from the stone that she felt it, a gentle, rhythmic pulse. A pulsing buzz she felt in her teeth, she stilled her breath, and it replaced her heartbeat. The gentle sound of a heartbeat was coming from the egg.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #PKDidAllHeCould  
> `````````````````````````````````````  
> This story starts with short, fairly choppy chapters, but im attempting to increase their lengths starting around chapter 3, right now its around 4,000 words and theyll be of similar length from there on out.


	2. Interlude 1: Didn't Jaxx already do this?

God-rays shined through the over casted sky, hornet did her best to avoid glaring at the intruder so high above, she turned to him instead.

He was always so distant when she was young, and she had looked down on him then. When she found out the truth, about all of it, she had developed a bitter hated against him for a long while. But absence and time had tempered her, and so she sat next to him now.

"I couldn't leave if I wanted" He paused, and they sat in silence for awhile longer,

"You're free to of course, the wind couldn't stop one of your will, yet you stay."

"I never would, after all this you would ask?" He had no face in her dreams, she only remembered her mother's from the egg.

They sat on the cliff overlooking the wastes, a storm white with frost and pale sand raged just outside the boundary of the kingdom.

"Who would replace me anyways? This land will always need a protector, and none alive could do my work" A dull orange warmth radiated from the storms deepest reaches, giving the dark figures wandering aimlessly within an orange outline in the mists. 

"What would you do if it all failed?" She recalled their face, a life time had passed but she would never forget it. Its perfectly smooth head trailing into two long horns, walking by her fathers side, ever present, ever stoic. She could see it again, if she so chose, in its monument in the city, though she had stayed away on principle. She was here to preserve the kingdom, not frolic where she didn't belong just to grasp glances of her past.

"It wont." she paused, when she resumed speaking, it was with a grave determination "And even if it does, I'll find a way, as you always did"

He nodded, and they turned to watch the storm together again under the evening sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you do when writers block hits? You write a dream sequence. You probably shouldn't take my advice.  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> This whole thing is just a setup for a larger project I'm planning.


	3. Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hornet challenges more interlopers, and takes a visit to the Teachers Archive

After the initial chaos had died down and the influx of travellers slowed back to a crawl, Hornet had begun to return to her old patrol routes. Luckily for her, the surface entrance of the kingdom was surrounded by a range of sheer cliffs, leaving the town that had built up around the old entrance to exist inside a bowl. She patrolled the range, her mobility destroying the challenge of the nearly impossible climb as she flitted about, hoping from outcropping to outcropping while she monitored the storm that marked the sacred land's border for any new approaches.

* * *

She had taken up the job before the kingdom had fallen, during the days when the unprepared had still come from far and wide to find the king and make their requests. She had turned them away, and killed those that refused, better by her blade then turned into a swollen corpse by the infection. Those had been the darkest days of her life, when the infection had ran loose without the royal families sacrifice to stop it, when her mother watched alongside her as the clans fled deepnest or rotted alongside the kingdoms caste, her goals had changed since then, but not her duty. Things had settled upon the sacrifice the royal couple made, but they had gone into exile after, why she hadn't known for years. And so once the kingdom froze her goal had changed, the outside world no longer had anything to fear from hallownest, besides of course the standard threats of a rotting corpse. But within hallownest lay what precious little of the past remained, the wonders and micracles of the king and queen, and of the forgotten god of greenpath. When she was younger she had thought that the kingdom should be abandoned, that all hope had been lost and it should be left to rot, the glories of the past mere monuments to hubris. But over the kingdoms endless final moment she had learned the secrets of the kingdom, of that which had been learned and hidden in the furthest reaches, and of the power one could gain if they found those secrets. Hallownest wasnt just a corpse, it was a vault, with the power of the gods hidden in its deepest reaches.

She didn't know the details of the events, but deep within the kingdom lay some power greater then the infection, and the god king and queen of Hallownest had made some grand sacrifice involving it in order to slow the infection. After that discovery the king was trailed by a figure, robed in the royal white cloak and steel, and eternally stoic, with no reaction to events going on around it. She had asked her father about the figure several times, but he rarely had any useful response for her, or atleast his answer was useless to the point that she hadn't remembered it. Around that same time the queen had left the palace for her garden reserve, and the only way in was sealed behind her. Hornet hadn't heard from her after that. 

* * *

She was troubled. Something impossible, or atleast improbable had happened.

The bug she had stopped had been no different then the others, pulled to the kingdom by the wind in search of the glories of the land. His requests, posture, even voice had nearly been rote, same as a hundred others who had appeared before her at the base of the cliff. This must have been the cause of her lack of perception she was sure, the bug simply shouldn't have been important. But the second mask they carried was unobjectively that of one of the dreamers, and whatever machination the ancient archivist had put in place clearly meant that she had to allow them entrance to the kingdom. Of course she only noticed after nearly driving her needle through their face, but mistakes happen.

How much time had passed since things began happening again? She had stopped caring... had it been months, days? after what she recognized as the end of the kingdom, it haddnt matterd till now to the point she had nearly forgotten what periods of time meant in the old kingdom.

Regardless, that figure had reminded her of the teacher, the most prominent archivist and researcher that the kingdom had known outside of its scholar king, she of course was the first choice for the dreamer role. She had barely spoken to Hornet before she was put to sleep, and her followers had been forced from the archive building long before they fell to the infection, such that they wouldn't destroy the records upon their turning. Hornet didn't remember any of the specifics of their discussions, but she did remember the teachers strange manners of speech, rivaling only her parents in density and difficulty to decipher. If anyone of the old kingdom would predict or expect what was happening, the teacher would, and her archive had been perfectly preserved...

A squat figure crested the cliff, pale masked, black bodied... one of the creatures had made it up while she was thinking, how fast could these things climb? It didn't seem to notice her from its position, and she felt uneasy moving to intercept it, its uncannyness greatly disturbed her. She would let the kingdom kill it, Hornet wouldn't object if she never had to personally deal with another of them. She set off at full speed back to the tunnels of the kingdom.

* * *

She could have re-entered the tunnels through the cliffs, but the well entrance was more convenient for her, plus the corpses in the crossroads were much more docile then the guardians of the vibrant wilds the cliff entrance lead to.

The town around the well had always confused her, generations had passed since the kingdoms fall, so she understood their forgetting of the dangers of the kingdom, yet still she wondered why they would choose to stay in their measly village with such wonders below, did they not know, or were they sub-consciously repulsed by what lay so deep below? Regardless it meant she had allowed them their presence, and even forgave them their expeditions into the shallower tunnels before the infection had returned and those who went below never returned. She felt rather responsible for that, and it re-affirmed her stance on outsiders entering the kingdom.

She hadn't been to the town in a long... no, not long, considering events "long" had certain implications. She hadn't been to the town for a _significant_ amount of time. On that visit the town had been measly, but with a few houses still inhabited. Somehow since then it had degraded even further, and all that remained was a single shop and a peculiar figure who she knew had lived their whole life without claiming one of the houses. She hurried through the town to the well it was built around, the figure watching her idly as she sped past them and down the well. She had spoken to them once upon a time, it was rather dreary.

Even with the ancient inhabitants reawakening, the kingdom proved little challenge for hornet to navigate as long as she kept mobile and picked her fights well. Her first challenge presented itself in the canyon that Monomon had built her archive in, the repository/guard automatons appeared to have started to be taken over as much as any normal bug. The jelly fish machines were not threatening on their own, but there were dozens of them drifting in close quarters and she didn't want to stir any of them from their docility. She repelled herself down the vertical drop, keeping clear as best she could from the dreary beings. Inside each was a membrane the size of her head that held a short inscription upon the acid stored inside. If it hadn't been for the infection creeping into the acid, the knowledge inside each would last longer then even her semi-immortal self would, but after all this time the sickness had finally made it in, corroding the inscriptions away into a smear of white powder inside the orange tinted sacks.

Passing through some acid with the help of one of the pale knight's old blessings (when had she last seen them?), she emerged into a more or less straight path to the archive, this close the security was much more tame and the automated guards seemed marginally healthier, though they too would likely be stricken sick soon. The Archive had always been one of the grandest of the Sacred Land's buildings, up there with the White Palace and the spires of the city. An ornate bridge extended over the central acid lake of the canyon, and at the end of it was a massive library of brass and stained glass. The building had been designed as a gift from the king to his favored natural philosopher, a strange being who had originated in the very same acid lake. It had dozens of rooms and hallways, and at the deepest center, built into the land even beneath the lake itself, was a massive vault, storing both the most secret and complex of the kingdoms knowledge, as well as the kings archivist, slumbering as a dreamer, much like Hornet's mother. Ornate gates opened up to a garden, mostly housing the rough vines and flowers of greenpath which had adapted to the acid of the canyon, but there were also a range of specialized greenhouses housing gifts from The Garden Queen. Past the garden was an interior that hadn't been touched by living bugs in an eon, even Hornet had stayed away from the building, as she had from most displays of the kingdoms lost brilliance.

  
Great flying beasts circled the heights of the caverns, fulfilling their unknowable patrols as she progressed across the bridge. In an age past the bridge had been ornate, the red and gold metals used so much in architecture beyond the palace to attempt to emulate the glory of the royal metal had been used on the bridge in such a skillful way that it had been one of the few examples of such architecture to actually be able to challenge that pale metal of the gods. But now it was all that was left, the engraved stones previously accompanying it smoothed by acid and sections of the bridge collapsing all together, their guard rails all that remained to show where once ordered stone had sat. Her walk across the bridge was nearly silent, and she welcomed the chance to enjoy the nature of the kingdom, the gentle acidfalls and chirps of the flyers an amazing change to the chittering and howling of the surface. Was there anywhere like this out amongst the wastes? Her clan came from far away, so there was atleast one civilization beyond the howling wind, which went strongly against the claims of her father of Hallownest being "the last and eternal kingdom"... and her step-mother had grown incredibly solemn when she asked, staring at the wall above her and staying silent for the rest of Hornet's visit so long ago before the fall.

But back to the present, she was on a mission. The archivist had never been open with her secrets, and hornet would likely have to reach the deep heart of the facility if she wished to find any information beyond the consistency of the best concrete or crop rotation manuals. She approached the brass gate, a plate adorned it and read:

"MONOMON'S HOUSE OF WISDOM:  
THEE BLESSED THEE WELCOME"

A flash of sharp silk, and she was through, the lock cleanly bisected.

The ground here was sharp and jagged, layer after layer of thick thorned vines ran through the once ornate masonry, and the ground was now as much wild nature as it was cracked and ancient stone. Many of the greenhouses were broken, either some ancient god blessed vibrant plant run wild from the inside out, or the vines smashing into the glass houses and smothering that within. One even ran totally wild, black and grey brambles completely blocking her view of the inside of the building. Small beasts cleared her path as she walked, scurrying off to hidden burrows or to nibble at the less offensive flora. A pang of guilt hit her as she approached the main door of the Archive, how many outsiders had she killed specifically to protect this building from being uncovered, just for her to plunder it herself? But still, she had saved them from a fate worse then death, and it wasn't just economy texts and farming guides within. This place held the secrets to Hallownest's great weapons and armors, and given the state of those who approached her patrol on the cliffs, Hallownest's peak technology had been far above that of wherever those travelers came from. As her hand approached the door, it pulsed white, a spiderweb-like design appeared just infront of the metal, depicting a mask along with a number of sigils. The door had a seal placed upon it... Brute forcing a seal was impossible, and who knows what this specific design would do to her if she touched it. She would have to find another way in. 

Taking a step back, she viewed the entirety of the front of the building. There was no other entry here, unless she wanted to smash through the stained glass and likely alert whatever security within the building remained. So she took a walk around the garden, circling the building. Looking out over the fence, she saw heavy pipes submerged into the acid lake, they would take her to some form of processing plant more the likely. But the acid still stung to the touch, even with her blessing. Much better if she could just find another access way into the building proper.

The Archive wasnt just a library, it also housed, fed, and cared for a significant crew of assistants and maintenance personnel within the building itself...

And there it was, a balcony on the back side of the building, overlooking both the rear garden and the lake. The archivist was... uniquely unsuited for regular quarters, so it was likely for her head assistant or a guest room for visitors from the city. With a sigh she launched her needle into the metal above the overlook, she would have to polish those scratched from her weapon later, and she yanked herself up before recovering her nail, the mirror smooth metal now indeed host to several scratches along the edges. She sheathed it, and took another moment to appreciate the view from up here. She excused her dallying, it was gorgeous, and this would likely be the last time she came here.

* * *

This door was much more cooperative, yielding to her push immediately, depositing her into a large, though significantly less then regal chamber. An ancient bed sat in the corner, along with a dresser, mirror, and stacks of stone slabs that were layed all across the floor. Stepping through the room around them carefully, she examined some of the inscriptions on the slabs. "GODWIND", "LASTSK-", "KINGLI-", Each had either a single word or word-fragment, with no apparent order to how they were placed or what the words actually related too. A large number also seemed broken. Even if this was a puzzle, it appears to have been broken by time or the author. The hallway the room opened into was much closer in appearance to the outside. The walls were trimmed with brass, the lanterns were gorgeous, fading weathered art adorned the walls, and the carpet held artistic depictions of the surrounding flora and fauna. Doors adorned the long hallway, but she wasn't there to pilfer left behind trinkets. She marked the door she entered through with chalk, and headed towards what she thought would be the primary chamber, from which she could ascend to the highest layer or descend towards the vault.

The hallway eventually opened to the open sanctum, the mysterious light ever-present in the kingdom filtered into the room through the grand windows along the dome roof, casting the room in a golden glow off the pure brass floors and walls. Below her and beyond the railing was the ground layer of the archive, where massive glass cylinders housed grey inscriptions in the acid contained within. The Teacher's methods were impressive, though her writings were unintelligible and Hornet preferred to read from stone. Hornet walked the circumference of her level of the room, towards a ladder to the highest room, in the spire of the dome.

The ladder itself was strange, the rungs each the size of her hand such that she had to hook her arm around each rather then grab them, and they were so far between that she had to throw herself between them using her momentum and re-position herself on the next. The ladder followed the curve of the dome. So eventually she was swinging from rung to rung, the rungs spaced almost horizontally before they made a tight turn up into the room, the opening far larger then any ordinary bug would need to get inside. She threw herself inside and caught her breath, looking down she saw the two other levels far beneath her.

The glass room was an observatory of some type, the whole of the lake visible from here. A massive corkboard matched the oversized desk in one "corner" of the circular room. She headed over to the board and looked closely at the large silk parchment hung on it, unfortunately the acid or humidity of the fog canyon had ruined the ink, and now all that was left was a large black smeary ovular outline with what was once writing at various points. The desk on the otherhand housed piles of stone plates. Most were blank, several had inane inscriptions much like those in the room she had entered through, but one at the center of the desk had been fully inscribed, the quality of the engraving reminded her of her own attempts at engraving when she was a child without the strength to cleanly chisel.

Aba, ENDTHINK-O-STOP-KINGLIGHT-FLOW-DREAM GODWIND-CH-WEST-O-KINGLIGHT-GRANDER-CH-SOUTH SERVITUDE-CH-ETERNALTOWER-CH-EAST LASTSKY-CH-NORTH-O-NEWTHINK-CENDA GATE-ABA-GODWIND-PASS-DESTROY

* * *

She had no clue what any of that meant, but it did seem important so she stored the tablet away. She would check out the rest of the archive then head back out through that balcony. She braced herself and leapt out the access hole, falling quickly for several seconds before impacting the metal floor with a resounding ringing. Up-close, the Teachers acid vessels loomed above her, a good twice her height. The symbols within moved with the fizzy bubbles. Scrolling lines about manufacturing good soil (?) in one, and avoiding some type of blight on farm stock beasts flowed in another. One after another passed her as she continued towards the downwards stairs, all written in the choppy language of the head Archivist. The stairway down to the basement seemed an afterthought to the hoops placed vertically downwards in the wall, the stairs had no railing, nor a backing. Instead smooth slabs of copper(bronze?) shot out of the wall at flat angles along the curved path down into the circular room.

Even her light steps produced a reverberating noise on each step, It was as if the teacher had intentionally made it impossible to sneak in this place. She was technically in a basement, underneath the island that had previously been at the lakes center, but while it had been hallowed out, you couldn't tell from the finished walls and wide open layout. At the bottom of the room was a pool of acid, with a large platform taking up most of the center. To her left and right were hallways, though she'd have to clear the acid to reach them. Floating lazily in the air was a cloud of the repository/security automatons, their tendrils hanging lazily in the air from their gel bodies. How were they floating as if in water?

The walls felt cold, though they felt cold everywhere... where was it that they had been warm? Had it been at some point in her life she had been somewhere hot? Her father had cast light from his being, but his was a light to see by, to drive away the darkness and reveal that hidden within, not a heat to warm your body. The fungal reaches were warm and moist with life, but even that didn't meet the requirements of her definition of 'hot'... where in the world had she felt it? Her hand caught on a barely raised discrepancy in the smooth walls. She took a step back, teetering near the edge of the stair, and searched for the outline of this oddity. A barely visible shift in the wall, about as large across as her arms spread out, stuck out of the rest of the metal wall about half an inch. She knocked on the wall, and a hollow reverberance met her. How intriguing.

Pulling at the small outcropping was hopeless, and while a lodged needle would give her purchase to tear the whole damn thing out of the wall if she so pleased, she wasn't interested in pissing off the guards. Time to change it up then, she pushed and heaved with all her might, a grid of thrown silk laid out in a web where she pushed, and with a flash of magic to the silk and a final heave, the door groaned and rotated about its middle, her side pushing into some hidden room, and the other half rotating towards the staircase. A nasty clunk above her sounded off the death of some ancient unfortunate gear-work mechanism. Thankfully the constructs behind her didn't appear to recognize her property destruction, it seems super-natural strength wasn't accounted for when they were created.

The room was dark, neither the regular pale blue of the tunnels or the bright orange of the wilds, what light did make it into this room was a dull green color, reflected off of the vats of acid that took up much of the room. The celling was high, and Hornet could just make out a frazzle of pipework running along it, pipes both massive and small quietly pushing and pulling hidden liquids across the facility. The air here was acrid, a sting on her chitin and in her lungs. At the end of the room was a board of wheels and levers, as well as two massive openings, one marked "INTAKE" and the other "OUTPUT", the former led into the wall and dropped into darkness, and the latter of which had a massive pipe pluged into it which ran into the fray of the celling.

Otherwise, the room was empty, even the acid here was just blank liquid. Rather disappointed, hornet headed back out into the chamber. The door was much more cooperative now, and she turned it shut once more, and continued on her way down. A guardian floated down to one of the acid vessels, and a audible and visible crack of lightning snapped between its tendrils and the vessel. One of the symbols inside turned to black power and dissolved into the liquid, and a glowing orange hot replica formed within the inner membrane of the guardian, gas bubbles formed within it and the surface of the being foamed briefly. The being floated off lethargically towards one of the hallways, another guard floating out of the acid pool and taking its previous place in the room.

She stepped down onto the 'island', it was white, and had its surface carved with the seal of the archive. She treaded more carefully down here, the throng of jellyfish above her crackled occasionally with energy, little arcs flying between them. Crates and chests laid untouched on the platform, the routing of resources through the facility had been caught in the same stasis as the rest of the kingdom, but even now there were no workers, and as such the stasis remained down here. The acid vessels here were getting more interesting, housing records of archive staff and cargo manifests, but without context it wouldn't help her figure anything out. The acid pool likely flowed down into the vault, but there were also likely a flock of jellies in it, the hallways would have to do. A breath, a sprint, and a leap! She soared over the gap and rolled on touchdown, 8/10 landing. She picked herself up, and continued down the way, a thrum of electricity buzzing its way down from the end of the corridor, a deep blue light matching it. The chamber was much smaller, though not claustrophobic, a far drop down the room on one side, and layer after layer of vessels on the other, and in the air, feral lumaflies and jellies casted light into the room. She edged her way to the first set of vessels, and began reading.

A family tree of nobles, another... another, still yet more, good lord. The history of cooking, a list of all the books in a library in the city, an explanation that a records been moved somewhere else, and then theres this one... This one was unique in its rambling, talking of her fathers kinglight, dreams, ungrowth... and there it was, the 3 masks in a circle, the symbol of the dreamers. Her mother, The Teacher, and Lurien. They were protecting something, that much she knew, and it was in the egg in the temple, but what was it? And why had that bug holding the Teacher's mask returned after so long? She would have to translate the encoded writings line by line.

"THIR-YOLK-ABA-ABSENCE-OUTER-SHELL-O-GATE-CONTAIN"  
Yolk... of an egg? The infection was similar to such, a orange liquid consuming and filling the "shell" of a husk. Was this a shell made to contain the yolk of infection?  
  
"LIGHT-EM-VESSEL-EM-EGG-EM-SEAL-THIR-WITHDRAW"  
Hornet smiled. This one was pretty obvious for Monomon, a "vessel" either is an egg, containing the yolk. Or more likely, she's had been referring to sealing this vessel within the egg. An image was buzzing in her mind, she could almost swear she had seen the egg open, a void leading into an endless expanse of black nothing within the temple. But when? And what had happened?  
  
"EXTERIOR-O-SEAL-WITHIN-DREAMER-INTWIXT-ATWIXT"  
This had been the line that had caught her eye. The exterior of the egg had indeed been sealed with the mark of the dreamers, so this wasn't just a description, this was a set of orders, or even instructions. Intwixt Atwixt, in and out. In life and dream?  
  
"CONTAIN-LIGHT-THIR-DREAM-CH-ABA-UNGROWTH-CONTAIN-"  
Why was Yolk and Light two separate things? Light was fairly clearly "ungrowth", the infection, but what was Yolk if not the infection? What else was there that would fit the concept of Yolk? And why "Light" for the infection? The stuff was bright, sure, but calling it Light was rather silly. The closest thing she could call "the light" would be...

There was a sun in her dreams. 

The memory struck, there had been a sun in the sky in her childhood. Her father, he had done something... he had died, gone missing? But there had been no more sun, and the stasis had begun. Had he died to kill the sun? Was the sun the infection? But it was still... in... the dream. Was the first line not describing the infection, but instead purely the thing used to contain it? Something which had its inside replaced by a foreign yolk?

She dug into the rest of the vessels with a renewed fervor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took forever, editing 4,000 words is not fun ): but here it is! and mores coming as soon as possible, but alas finals are here so not *that* soon
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> Theres not alot to work with here, so I may have made up the interior of all the buildings from whole cloth. Also this is tied into the other fic im writing, so if you want to see the PK die, its probably going to be over there :p


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